Lord knows we’ve heard this mantra for months, “Go Woke! Go Broke!” in relation to Bud Light’s loss of the number one beer sales slot in the United States.
It even sounds good when you put it in the context of a conservative “boycott” of Bud Light that was sparked by “outrage” over a Bud Light partnership with a transgender influencer.
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I mean, when has “outrage media” ever let the truth get in the way of a good story?
But, the reality of Modelo’s overtaking Bud Light wasn’t some flash event, a lightning bolt brought on by millions of Americans throwing down their Bud Light cans, yelling that they are mad as hell, and picking up their new favorite Mexican beer.
(Which would be somewhat hilarious considering all the nonsense about “the wall”.)
An article in today’s New York Times paints a different story, one that many smart marketers probably had been picking up on for years.
It is one of an organization doing a great job of marketing, understanding their customers, and having a strategy and sticking with it.
Modelo has been on the rise for more than a decade. In 2012, the folks at Budweiser started to recognize the competitive landscape was shifting. So, they attempted to buy Modelo’s parent company.
The Obama administration showed good sense to say, “allowing Modelo to be eaten up by one of the two major players was not good for competition.” Meaning the merger didn’t go through.
This put the brand in the hands of an independent company, Constellation that had to really work at promoting the beer in a way to make money off their brand.
They did this by doing a couple of really smart brand management moves:
- They embraced their Mexican heritage. Your founding is the heart of your brand.
- They did market research and positioned the brand as a beer for “game day”. This helped expand the market for the beer.
- They jumped on board a trend of consumers looking for higher quality/premium food and beverage.
On the other hand, Bud Light jumped from tactic to tactic.
Look at the Bud Light Seltzer move, the flavored Bud Lights, and the other brand extensions that were definitely flashes in the pan.
One thing that the article points out is that kids don’t want to drink the same thing their parents drank… this stuck with me not because I think it is right or wrong, but because probably the biggest failure of the Bud Light brand was in not keeping the brand fresh.
The Bud Light brand fell into a three-pronged trap:
- Customers changed.
- The company put tactics before strategy.
- The brand became old and dusty.
A lot of folks deal with this.
You overcome it by:
- Market Orientation: staying in the market, talking to customers, and doing your research.
- Strategy before tactics. You have to know where you are going…if not, any road will get you there.
- Refresh your brand from time to time. Every long-standing brand has to update itself once a generation or so. If you don’t, you become something that customers turn their back on because you are “out of date”, “dusty”, “stale”, or “your mom’s/dad’s brand”.
What’s your take?
To me, it wasn’t Woke = Broke.
It is Dusty = Dumped. Or, good marketing beating bad marketing.